New MacBook Air Offers Best Battery Life Of Any Apple Laptop Ever

Macworld’s James Galbraith notes that when Apple revealed the new MacBook Air at WWDC, the highlighted feature was its drastically improved battery life, and while in testing Macworld Lab didnt experience the 12-hour battery life cited by Apple, their tests do show that the new MacBook Air lasts considerably longer than before, and were the best they’ve seen from an Apple laptop.

For example, with a movie clip running in full screen mode with Wi-Fi disabled, the new 11-inch MacBook Air lasted 6 hours and 6 minutes, compared to 3 hours and 34 minutes for the 2012 model. The mid-2013 13-inch standard configuration MacBook Air lasted 8 hours and 18 minutes, or 36 percent longer than the new 11-inch MacBook Air and 65 percent longer than last year’s 13-inch MacBook Air, and compared to a 2013 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, the 13-inch MacBook Air lasted 75 percent longer.